Trust me
Trust is having a rough time. Trust in politicians? Fragile.
Trust in AI? “But what if it hallucinates and tells me the leading authority is a case from Hogwarts?”
Trust in institutions, businesses and the bloke selling a “perfect runner” on Facebook Marketplace? Also questionable.
Which is why, in sales and BD, trust has never mattered more.
And when it comes to trust, David Maister’s seminal book The Trusted Advisor still stands the test of time. Written in 2000, before ChatGPT, LinkedIn gurus and people saying “let’s circle back” without a trace of irony, the trust equation remains one of the best ways to think about why people buy from you.
Simple. Not easy.
Here are three things to think about when it comes to building (destroying) trust. Enjoy.
#1. Credibility gets you through the door
Credibility is your calling card.
It’s your reputation, your track record, your digital presence, your referral network and what people say about you when you are not in the room.
Referrals matter hugely here. In the early stages of any relationship, you are often borrowing somebody else’s credibility before you have earned your own.
“Jane said I should speak to you.”
“We’ve worked with them before.”
“You came highly recommended.”
That is borrowed trust. And it is incredibly powerful.
If you have low credibility, you do not get many calls. Brutal, but true.
In BD terms, credibility means making your expertise visible. Not in a “look at me, I’m brilliant” way, but in a “this person clearly understands my world” way.
Practical things to do:
- publish short, useful views on issues affecting clients
- make sure your LinkedIn profile actually explains what you do
- actively build referral relationships internally and externally
- help other people first, because reciprocity matters
And with AI? Same principle.
Clients do not care that you are using AI because it makes your life easier. They care whether it improves their experience. The firms getting this right are not positioning AI as a gimmick. They are positioning it as a way to improve client outcomes.
Hype is not credibility. Results are.
#2. Reliability keeps your seat at the table
Credibility might get you into the room. Reliability keeps you there.
There is no point being the impressive person in the pitch if, three weeks later, you are missing deadlines, dodging emails and blaming “internal process” like it is a mysterious woodland creature.
Reliability is simple. It is as easy as DWYSYDWYSYGTDI.
Do What You Say You Do When You Say You’re Going To Do It.
Catchy, admittedly, it is not. But it works.
Trust is built in the small moments:
- the promised follow-up
- the update you said you would send
- the honest “we are not there yet, but here’s what we are doing about it”
- the meeting that starts on time and actually has a point
Radical behaviour in some organisations.
And AI introduces an interesting wrinkle here too.
There will absolutely be a temptation over the next few years for professionals to start blaming AI for mistakes, delays or imperfect outputs.
That would be a mistake.
Because despite the hype, AI is not perfect. Nor are trainees. Nor are partners. Nor is Karen from finance who still cannot work out how to share her screen on Teams after four years.
Like most things in life, AI requires patience, training, refinement and sensible supervision.
But critically, it also requires robust governance.
Clear processes > Defined ownership > Human oversight > Validation procedures >
Appropriate escalation routes.
And proper guardrails around where and how AI should be used.
The firms succeeding with AI are not expecting perfection on day one. They are treating it like any other important business capability: governed properly, tested carefully and improved continuously over time.
Exactly like they would with a new joiner.
#3. Intimacy and self-orientation still matter. Possibly more than ever.
“Intimacy” sounds like a slightly dangerous word for a professional services newsletter, but stay with me.
In Maister’s world, intimacy is about understanding the person opposite you:
- their pressures
- their commercial drivers
- their fears
- their politics
- what success looks like for them
- and what might get them shouted at internally next Tuesday morning
This is where AI becomes genuinely interesting.
For the first time, professionals can conduct incredibly deep research on clients, markets and individuals at a scale that simply was not possible before.
AI can help you:
- track developments across a client’s business
- monitor leadership changes
- identify trigger events
- analyse sectors
- connect internal relationship dots
- and keep you updated on your clients’ digital lives in near real time
That is powerful.
But here is the important bit:
Insight ≠ relationship.
Knowing more about a client is useful. Making a client feel understood is different.
Professional services remains a deeply people-centric business.
Trust is still built in conversations. In empathy. In listening properly. In remembering what matters to somebody. In showing up consistently over time.
AI can help you prepare for the meeting. It cannot build the relationship for you.
Not yet anyway. And if it ever does, we are all probably in trouble.
Chat to Tina by voice, when you’re between meetings, on the commute to/from work, or heading into something you’d rather avoid.
Final thought
In a low-trust world, trust becomes a competitive advantage.
The professionals and firms who consistently build it will win disproportionately over the next few years.
The rest will still be “circling back”.
We’re building a team of voice enabled AI assistants to support you with BD activities and allow you to spend more time being human. Interested? We’d love to chat.
